Generally, electronic components using a ceramic material, such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, a thermistor, and the like, include a ceramic body formed of the ceramic material, internal electrodes formed in the ceramic body, and external electrodes installed on surfaces of the ceramic body to be connected to the internal electrodes.
Recently, in accordance with miniaturization and multi-functionalization of electronic products, multilayer ceramic electronic components also tend to be miniaturized and multifunctionalized. Therefore, a multilayer ceramic capacitor having a small size and a high capacitance has been demanded.
In order to miniaturize the multilayer ceramic capacitor and increase capacitance of the multilayer ceramic capacitor, it has been required to significantly increase an electrode effective area (increase an effective volume fraction required for implementing capacitance).
In order to implement the miniature and high-capacitance multilayer ceramic capacitor as described above, in manufacturing the multilayer ceramic capacitor, a method of significantly increasing areas of internal electrodes in a width direction of a body through a design that does not have a margin by exposing the internal electrodes in the width direction of the body and completing the multilayer ceramic capacitor by separately attaching side margin portions to electrode exposed surfaces of the multilayer ceramic capacitor in the width direction in a process before sintering after the multilayer ceramic capacitor is manufactured has been used.
However, in such a method, in a process of forming the side margin portion, a metal included in the internal electrode or an oxide of the metal may be disposed in the side margin portion, and reliability of the multilayer ceramic capacitor may be decreased due to the metal or the oxide of the metal.
In detail, an effect of decreasing a distance between adjacent internal electrodes appears due to the metal or the oxide of the metal included in the side margin portion, such that electric field concentration is generated, resulting in a short-circuit.
Therefore, research into technology capable of improving reliability of a subminiature and high-capacitance multilayer ceramic capacitor by preventing a short-circuit in the multilayer ceramic capacitor has been required.